Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Developer: Airtight Games
Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: 2009

Dark Void is an upcoming third person shooter from Capcom. Developed by Airtight Games, the title at first glance seems to resemble Gears of War with a jetpack. Featuring the signature stop and pop gameplay the aforementioned series is known for, the controls felt very familiar right away.

The level we played featured a variety of things to do and modes to play. The beginning of the level introduced a jetpack equipped commando entering the battlefield with his fellow soldiers. The enemies encountered were all robotic in nature with seemingly no signs of organic life. The majority of this portion of the game involved taking cover behind barrels, boxes, walls and other level objects while lining up shots on the adversaries when the opportunity arised. Standard assault rifles, grenades and good old fashioned one hit melee kills are what were at our disposal here.

Where things started to change up a bit was a little later on when the platforming elements came into play. The player is able to grab onto ledges to scale up to higher places, but the camera switches to a view behind the player facing up towards the sky. The player then has to navigate past enemies trying to shoot at him, while taking shots of his own and leaping to adjacent ledges to avoid damage. With the aid of the jetpack at times, it’s possible to vault up to even higher ledges on the way to the top. If ammo is completely exhausted, or if getting up close and personal is the preferred method of disposal, the one hit melee attacks work here as well. While the melee maneuvers on the ground are effective enough, reaching at an enemy from below and tossing him off a cliff is much more satisfying.

Upon reaching the top of the compound, we were treated to our first taste at flight in the game. Feeling a little bit clumsy at first to simulate the initial velocity of the rocket’s propulsion, we quickly felt at home with these controls as well. At this point, we were tasked with taking out all the gunner ships. Considering that we didn’t have any weapon to use during flight, this initially posed a little bit of a problem.

Things took a turn for the better, however, when we realized that we could hijack any of the ships. You start the hijacking process by pressing one button when within range of a ship, but it’s much more involved than that. After a little automated scene of your player grabbing onto the little ship, a mini game starts up. The ship was pretty much a flying disc with a rotating cannon in the middle. The rotating cannon turns to face your direction before charging up a blast to kill you. You can avoid the cannon blasts by circling around the ship to make it difficult for it to line up a shot on you. The main thing you want to do at this point, is to pull up a panel and rip out one of the main components from inside the ship. The trickery comes into play as to do this, you have to stay stationary for awhile so that you can hold down a button to completely pull the panel off.

Once you’ve done this successfully, you’ll be able to enact a quick time event to rip the pilot out of his cockpit and control the gunship yourself. After taking out all the ships, a brief cut scene played and the demo was over.

Dark Void plays and feels really good right now. Though the build was early, there is quite a bit of time left before the 2009 release date. We’ll be keeping our eyes open on this one.